Barry Mann Quotes

Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you're trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give you your way in.

If I was going to write something, I'd need to stop for three months and just see if I had any thoughts in there.

Many novice writers, students in particular, think that writing is little more than copying down their self-talk, the palaver of the voices they hear in their heads. Of course, self-talk is thinking, and writing begins with thinking.

I think that most writers who wait until they're inspired to write are just waiting for the fear to subside.

I feel like some sort of fiction-writing hobo, jumping trains and always hoping I'll find a good place to start a fire in the next town. And I keep having these panicky episodes where I corner my husband and rant at him: 'I don't have anywhere to write! I can't write! I don't have a place to write!'

Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

If I don't have a project going, I sit down and begin to write something - a character sketch, a monologue, a description of some sight, or even just a list of ideas.

I like writing a lot more than I used to. I used to find it scary but now I've got used to it once it gets going. I used to find it hard to start. Fear of the blank page. The first thing you write down won't bear any relation to what's in your head and that's always disappointing.

Professionals don't get writer's block. I can always come up with the punch line.

I'm a really slow writer. What I need to start writing on any given day, is a kernel, a line of dialogue, anything I can sense concretely.

I don't find it easy to think of good stuff to write about.

If somebody says that they want to write a book but do not know what to write about, they will never write a book.

It's tough to know what I'm going to write about. I never really know until it starts happening.

Sometimes you don't really know what you're going to write about. I mean, there's times where you get into a writing room and it's a complete flop. And then there's times where you get to a writing room and you're like, 'Oh, I'm just on a roll.'

I sit in my room at my desk, looking out the window to the yard and waiting for a plot to come to me, to rise slowly in my mind.

With two books a year, I don't have time for writer's block.

If you do enough planning before you start to write, there's no way you can have writer's block. I do a complete chapter by chapter outline.

Kids who want to become writers might want to start carrying a small notebook in their backpack. I encourage people to sit down in malls and listen, just listen, to how people talk.

The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.

I'm constantly battling writer's block; it usually takes me two hours to write anything.

I was writing fiction, but not finishing fiction.

As a writer, there are times when you have something to say, and yet no particular 'hook' upon which to hang the missive you are burning to release.

word thrower … phrase maker

I'd been writing fiction for 50 years, since I was 19. And when you write fiction, it becomes a way of thinking: there's always a novel around. The strange thing was that after 'Remember Me,' there wasn't.

I don't have writer's block, really. I do have times when I can't get the lead, and that is the only part of the story which I have serious trouble with. I don't write a word of the article until I have the lead. It just sets the whole tone - the whole point of view.